Vos stands by budget provisions on tenure, shared governance

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) talks to the media on June 3 about ongoing budget deliberations. He said this week that the Joint Finance Committee is likely to stick by proposed changes to tenure and shared governnance for the University of Wisconsin System. Credit: Associated Press

For Robin Vos, the legislative movement to reframe tenure and shared governance is not about academic freedom.

It's about putting chancellors in the University of Wisconsin System in the best position to succeed as effective CEOs. It's about giving them more power to demand high performance from their faculty. And it's about having the final call in curriculum decisions they see as best for their institutions.

Everything else — the outrage from faculty, the concern about losing top educators and researchers — is "a lot of panic over something that's being sensationalized for political effect," the Assembly Speaker told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in an interview from Washington, D.C., where he was attending a National Conference of State Legislatures event.

The powerful Republican from Rochester has been a lightning rod in the monthslong debate over the future of tenure and shared governance in one of the nation's most respected public higher education systems. He has clashed with faculty who say he doesn't understand the unique culture of universities and mischaracterizes academia when he says things like: Nobody should have a job for life; faculty should be employees, not dictators; and employees should not choose their bosses.

The flashpoint of the debate is new language on its way to becoming law that would allow tenured faculty to be laid off or terminated when "deemed necessary" because of budget issues or changes in academic programs. That's much broader than the current parameters that tenured faculty can be dismissed only for just cause or a campuswide financial emergency.

The new layoff language likely will not be dropped or modified before the Legislature adopts a final state budget, Vos said.

"What frustrates me more than anything — I understand why people on campus love the status quo," Vos said Thursday. "But it's not the Legislature creating difficulties for attracting faculty."

Vos argued that faculty have sensationalized the issue by framing tenure solely around academic freedom.

"Rather than tenure being about academic freedom, it seems to be more about job protection," Vos said. "It's this idea a tenured professor could decide they don't have to show up, or keep up with ideas in their field."

Vos said the issue is "much more about job performance and ensuring students get a good education."

"I am 100% supportive of the idea of protecting academic freedom," he said. "In my mind, there is no doubt that is how a university should be run."

As a conservative, Vos said, "I think there's a lack of intellectual diversity on campuses today. Protecting the opportunity for people to have different viewpoints, I totally agree with that."

Academic freedom will be protected in a new UW System Board of Regents policy when tenure is removed from state law, Vos said.

The Assembly speaker said he's also open to campus chancellors adding language to keep tenure strong, as long as "it's creating a situation where people aren't guaranteed a job regardless of performance, or it isn't designed to ensure one doesn't have to be up-to-date in their field."

Compared to Act 10

Wisconsin helped pioneer the concept of academic freedom when its Board of Regents declared in 1894 that they would not fire economist Richard Ely, even though his research and teaching on the benefits of labor unions had offended one of the regents.

A declaration from the regents in the wake of that controversy remains one of the most ringing endorsements for academic freedom in the history of American higher education: "Whatever may be the limitations which trammel inquiry elsewhere," the regents wrote back then, "we believe the great state University of Wisconsin should ever encourage that continual and fearless sifting and winnowing by which alone the truth can be found."

While Vos says the intent today is simply to make campuses more disciplined, responsible, efficient and nimble, critics maintain the reputation of the state's vaunted higher education system is in jeopardy.

Attention is magnified because Gov. Scott Walker is effectively running for president and has referred to his reform efforts for the UW System as "the Act 10 of higher education." Act 10 curtailed collective bargaining for most public employees and remains a bitterly divisive piece of legislation.

The American Historical Association and 21 other national associations of scholars across a wide variety of disciplines released a joint statement Thursday saying they are "gravely concerned with proposals pending in the Wisconsin Legislature that threaten to undermine several longstanding features of the state's current higher education system: shared governance, tenure, and academic freedom."

The language on blogs and in political communications is not nearly as restrained. Wisconsin and its leadership increasingly are referred to as "Wississippi," a not-too-subtle link to a state that perennially ranks at the bottom for education. Faculty say they are demoralized, and worried that the best and brightest will leave for what they see as a more receptive environment if the proposed changes to state law go through. Some are bluntly warning colleagues around the country not to consider coming here.

Don't be 'an island'

Campus and UW System leaders are still hoping to persuade lawmakers to delete all nonfiscal language referring to tenure, shared governance and layoff provisions because they say the lawmakers haven't allowed public discussion of proposed changes, or provided evidence that there's a problem.

While faculty are concerned that widespread layoffs could be coming with broader latitude given to chancellors, Vos said he doesn't expect that to happen. He said he also doesn't expect faculty to be picked off because they're doing controversial research, as many faculty members have suggested could happen.

"If they have let their skills lapse, aren't teaching, aren't pulling their weight, they may have reason to be concerned," he said.

Faculty should not be "an island unto themselves," Vos said. "They have to be responsive to the chancellor and students."

Vos said he believes chancellors ultimately should have authority to manage employees as they see fit.

If a department has only a few students in a major, the chancellor should have authority to drop the major and downsize faculty in that area, he said.

Downsizing through retirement "is always preferable to layoffs," Vos added. "But do we need to have every major on every campus, or should we specialize more or do a more collaborative process?"

That's not to say campuses should abandon offering a broad array of courses in the humanities, the Assembly speaker added. "You want to allow students an opportunity for a liberal arts education."

Input, but that's all

Vos also has strong opinions about shared governance, a treasured tenet of higher education that allows faculty, staff and students to have a voice in matters that directly affect them, and in many cases, decision-making authority, too.

Vos especially opposes faculty having a major say in who becomes their boss.

Faculty traditionally have made up the majority on search and screening committees for chancellors, and a faculty member has chaired the committees. Chancellors technically are considered members of the faculty.

The UW System Board of Regents last week adopted a new policy that would still give faculty a voice, but not the majority. Regents also would be involved earlier in the process and would chair the search and screen committees.

Vos referenced his own experience while he was a student at UW-Whitewater, majoring in political science.

He was appointed by then-Gov. Tommy Thompson to be the student representative on the Board of Regents from 1989 to 1991.

He also served on a student committee at UW-Whitewater that weighed in on how student segregated fees should be divided among activities, programs and student organizations.

"Ultimately, the chancellor got to decide. It was a student recommendation," Vos said. "I have supported shared governance in an advisory role. But it has evolved to instead of offering advice, having the ability to decide and dictate."

Vos said if a chancellor wants to create a new major, the chancellor has to ask the faculty first. The faculty can veto the major.

"In the end, the person hired to run the institution should ultimately be responsible for making the decision," Vos said.

About Karen Herzog

Karen Herzog covers higher education. She also has covered public health and was part of a national award-winning team that took on Milwaukee's infant mortality crisis.